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Johnny Sibert, second from left, with Carl Smith, center, and his band, The Tunesmiths (photo: submitted).

Steel Guitar Hall of Famer John Sibert, whose tone and musicality were central to the appeal of top-charting country hits for Carl Smith, Kitty Wells and Little Jimmy Dickens, died Saturday at age 80, after years of declining health.

Mr. Sibert joined Smith’s band, The Tunesmiths, in October 1951, when he was 17, and quickly became an identifying element of Smith’s sound. In 1998, Smith told The Tennessean that Mr. Sibert “set the style for the music on my records for years and years.”

Mr. Sibert’s solos were tasteful endeavors that drove home each song’s melody, and his goal as an instrumentalist was to support rather than distract from the song.

Born in Indianapolis, Mr. Sibert was raised in Nashville. He sat in the front row of Ryman Auditorium for a “Grand Ole Opry” show as a 12-year-old, and the experience sparked a love for country music. He was particularly drawn to Roy Wiggins, who played steel for Roy Acuff.

At 14, Mr. Sibert learned to play the steel — a fretless instrument that is notoriously difficult to master — and formed a band. Soon, he was playing on local radio and in the band of Big Jeff Bess.

“Big Jeff’s band was a learning ground for musicians,” Mr. Sibert told former Tennessean reporter Jay Orr. “He’d take young musicians he thought could cut it someday, and you’d play with him and you’d get the best experience in the world, because he would sing everybody’s songs.”

Bess’ band provided effective music schooling, and when Smith heard Mr. Sibert’s steel on a radio broadcast, he asked the teenager to audition for his band. At the time, Smith was among country music’s hottest young stars, with a Billboard No. 1 hit in the rollicking “Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way.”

Mr. Sibert would spend years playing that one, in addition to the smashes he recorded with Smith, including “Are You Teasing Me” (recorded at Mr. Sibert’s first session with Smith), “Hey Joe!,” “Loose Talk” and “There She Goes.” He also played sessions for others, contributing to Wells’ “Heartbreak U.S.A.,” Dickens’ “Out Behind the Barn,” the Everly Brothers’ first studio recordings and efforts from Johnnie & Jack, Lefty Frizzell and more. He exited The Tunesmiths in 1959 to join Wells’ band, but returned in 1961 as Smith’s bandleader.

Mr. Sibert tired of the road, and in 1969 he quit Smith’s band and took a job as a security guard. He played some local shows but quit music entirely in the mid-1970s. He put his guitars away, with no apparent regret, and when he joined the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1998, he said he put his award in a pile rather than on a wall. Mr. Sibert joined The Tennessean as a security guard in 1977 and worked there into the new century.

Normally hesitant to recount his glory days in country music, Mr. Sibert opened up in 2000 to a prodigiously talented 17-year-old named Chris Scruggs, who would often visit The Tennessean’s offices, asking for stories and pointers. Scruggs, who is now among the prime figures in Nashville roots music, credits Mr. Sibert with teaching him the steel.

“When I hear Chris play, it’s like John is right there,” says Mr. Sibert’s longtime friend Shirley Hardison, who worked with him in security at The Tennessean. “The sound is so much alike.”

In 2009, Scruggs reflected on Mr. Sibert’s impact, saying, “I steal all of Johnny’s licks, but then, he isn’t using them anymore.”

Mr. Sibert departed The Tennessean around 2003, and his health steadily declined in his final decade.

He is remembered as a master of the steel in the era before most of the instrument’s players used knee levers and foot pedals to manipulate the sound (the “pedal steel” era began in 1953, but Mr. Sibert only occasionally used pedals). He is remembered as a key component in some of country’s greatest hits of the 1950s and ’60s. And he is remembered for his role in mentoring Scruggs, who carries Mr. Sibert’s lessons to new listeners every day.

A visitation will be held Monday from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. at Woodlawn-Roesch-Patton Funeral Home and Memorial Park, 660 Thompson Lane in Nashville, with a graveside service at 1 p.m.

They sat, quietly, in plush seats, next to the president of the United States, the first lady and fellow Kennedy Center Honors recipients Paul McCartney, show tune stylist Jerry Herman and famed dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones on Sunday night, as host Caroline Kennedy proclaimed the glittering evening’s intent.

“We are here tonight to honor and celebrate accomplished artists who have enriched the life of our country,” Kennedy said.

This was the 33rd annual edition of the Honors. It remains a holiday season television perennial (this year’s broadcast will be on Dec. 28), and as a live event it is a bipartisan highlight of the D.C. social year, complete with big-name performers and an audience full of political Who’s Whos.Continue reading →

Born George Richardson on Nov. 30 1935 in Promise Land, Ark., Mr. Richey co-wrote classic country songs that were recorded by artists including Wynette and George Jones. He aided in the creation of Wynette’s “‘Til I Can Make It On My Own” and Jones’ “(A Picture of Me) Without You” and “The Grand Tour,” and he produced material for Wynette, Merle Haggard, Johnny Horton, Wanda Jackson and others.

In a 2009 interview with www.tunesmith.net, Mr. Richey said, “Music was my life here on earth. It is what got me through the journey. It paved the way down so many roads that were restricted for most. . . . I was eaten up with it. I lived it, breathed it and worshiped it.”Continue reading →

Karen Elson picked up her guitar and stepped up to the microphone at Third Man Records in Nashville last week, staring out into a room packed with friends, Third Man fans and industry folks — most of whom had never heard more than a few minutes of her music.

Fortunately for her, playing music that no one’s ever heard is a pretty familiar feeling.

After a decade of keeping her songs to herself, the British-born musician, model and Middle Tennessee resident has just released her debut album, The Ghost Who Walks, in part via Third Man — the label owned by her husband and producer, world-famous rocker Jack White. White got Elson into the studio after hearing her play one of her songs at home, and it’s hard for her to say when the album would have been made without others’ persuasion.

“Just the idea of a model-slash-singer-slash-anything is such a clichéd thing,” Elson says. “There’s not much expected of models. I realized that if I was going to make a record, that I really had to do something that was genuine and that I put my whole heart and soul into. . . . I think if I had just put my voice to something and let everybody else do the work, I wouldn’t be proud of myself.”Continue reading →

Visual artist Corey Frizzell -- nephew of country great Lefty -- will also be present, with a portrait print of Whitley that's set to be auctioned at the event. Part of the proceeds from the tribute (admission is $20 at the door) will go toward defraying medical costs related to Frizzell's daughter Lyric's battle with Leukemia.

The event is set to start at 8:30 p.m., and Nashville Palace is located at 2611 McGavock Pike.

Click to see a years-spanning gallery of Eddy Arnold photos (this image: courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame).

He was the affable "Tennessee Plowboy" who brought elegance, sophistication and millions of fans to country music. Eddy Arnold, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, died around 4:40 a.m. Thursday at NHC Place in Cool Springs at the age of 89.

Mr. Arnold's contributions to the history of American popular music are manifold, and integral. He sold more than 85 million records, with 37 singles charting on the pop charts and many more impacting the country charts. He ranks as Billboard magazine's single most popular country artist of all time. He was a star of stage and screen, and he was also a public face of Nashville music for decades.

Hits such as "Make The World Go Away," "I Want To Go With You," "Turn The World Around," "I Really Don't Want To Know" and "You Don't Know Me" charmed a nation and moved country toward the popular mainstream.

"Eddy Arnold has become virtually an institution in American life, with an identity that is only peripherally related to country music," wrote Bill Malone in his definitive history, Country Music, USA. Malone went on to describe the "almost unparalleled impact that the Tennessee Plowboy has had on the country field."

Though his music was seldom embraced by traditionalists, Mr. Arnold was one of the titans of Nashville music. His voice was an unpressured, engaging croon that sometimes recalled a clarinet played in the lower register, and though he favored strings and uptown instrumentation, he delivered his songs with few affectations.

Mr. Arnold utilized genre-blurring arrangements, but he was at base a storyteller of the highest order.

"In many ways the stories of Eddy Arnold and country music run parallel, both starting out poor and a bit backward but, in the end, reaching from Tennessee to the ends of the earth," wrote Don Cusic, in Eddy Arnold: I'll Hold You In My Heart, one of two biographies written about the legend.Continue reading →